RAND’s citation of increased al-Qaeda attacks in Saudi Arabia, Kenya, Tunisia, Algeria, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan, Jordan, Turkey, Egypt and the United Kingdom after 2001 as proof of growing strength is devalued by the curious fact that there have been no significant attacks against the United States homeland since 9/11. If al-Qaeda were indeed gaining capability over that period — which the increase in the number of attacks is intended to prove — then why should it expend most of its ferocity upon Muslim majority countries or European countries with large Muslim populations rather than upon its hated enemy, the United States? One alternative hypothesis to explain the same data is that al-Qaeda was fighting to maintain support among Muslims who were less confident of global victory after observing the American response; that the attacks on Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt and the United Kingdom were attempts to keep their base in line even as it proved unable to strike at the American homeland.

There is other evidence to suggest that military action has had some political effect on al-Qaeda. Carl Ciovacco‘s study of the evolution of al-Qaeda’s policy toward attacking noncombatants describes how al-Qaeda went from punctilious observance of noncombatant immunity in 1991 to declaring American civilians as legitimate targets in 1997 during the period before the American military response. He notes the moment when Bin Laden declared it was licit to attack US civilians.

This phase begins in March, 1997, with a CNN interview of bin Laden in Afghanistan. In a dramatic change to bin Laden’s view of noncombatants, he hints that civilians may not be as shielded as they were in the past. …

By 1998 al Qaeda declared it was not only permissible for attack civilians, it was actually their holy duty.

Bin Laden moved from lukewarm approval of noncombatant immunity to overtly declaring that noncombatants were legitimate targets. On February 22, 1998, bin Laden released a signed statement on behalf of the World Islamic Front. … In this statement, bin Laden, and the rest of the alliance, not only sanctioned the killing of civilians, but also elevated it to level of a holy duty, or fatwa.

By June, 2002, before the invasion of Iraq, every vestige of restraint for taking civilian life was already gone. Suleiman Abu Ghaith, al Qaeda’s official spokesman, said in an essay on al Qaeda’s web site al Neda:

We have the right to kill four million Americans – two million of them children – and to exile twice as many and wound and cripple hundreds of thousands. Furthermore, it is our right to fight them with chemical and biological weapons, so as to afflict them with the fatal maladies that have afflicted the Muslims because of [Americans'] chemical and biological weapons. America knows only the language of force. America is kept at bay by blood alone.

Al Qaeda went to increasingly high levels of ferocity even when faced largely with a political and intelligence response. These developments took place before the invasion of Iraq. In fact, September 11 happened before the first military response to al-Qaeda had taken place. But amazingly it was al-Qaeda’s sad combat experience in Iraq that pushed them to reverse its policy towards unlimited attacks on civilians. Ciovacco, a former officer in Iraq who holds a Masters in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School described the political effect of the contrast between US military operations and indiscriminate terrorist attacks on al-Qaeda’s image in the Muslim world.

there is considerable evidence that al-Qaeda’s attacks on noncombatants are having a deleterious effect on al-Qaeda’s support base both within the organization and the mainstream Muslim community. The number of ex-jihadists and formerly supportive Muslim clerics speaking out against al-Qaeda has increased in the last several years precisely because of its targeting of civilians. After al-Qaeda’s former chief in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, began targeting noncombatant Shia, support for al-Qaeda within the greater Muslim community dropped precipitously. Al-Qaeda’s increased suicide attacks on civilians within Saudi Arabia and Pakistan have also caused its supporters to leave in droves. In fact, a recent Terror Free Tomorrow poll in Pakistan shows that support for bin Laden has plummeted from 46% to 24% and backing for al-Qaeda has dropped from 33% to 18% in the past six months. In another survey from 2005, when suicide bombings against noncombatants first peaked, the number of Pakistanis believing that suicide bombing was justified dropped from 73% to 46%. …

In 2005, Zawahiri directed al-Qaeda in Iraq to stop killing Shia noncombatants because it was hurting al-Qaeda’s greater cause. Furthermore, a top al Qaeda strategist, Abu Yahya al-Libi, has written to al-Qaeda in Iraq telling them that its killing of “too many civilians” was undermining al-Qaeda’s global strategy.

Ciovacco cites the same attacks on Saudi Arabia and Pakistan that RAND does, but reaches another conclusion from the evidence. This paints a somewhat different picture from the portrait offered up by RAND. While it doesn’t discount the importance of intelligence and police work, these bits of evidence suggest that military action indeed has a legitimate role to play against terrorism. First, military and diplomatic action is required to neutralize state sponsors of terrorism, something which law enforcement cannot achieve. Second, military action is necessary to protect policemen and intelligence agents in lawless parts of the world, in failed states where terrorism is commonly to be found and where it would be too dangerous to venture otherwise. Finally, military action sends a signal which police work cannot equal. And this last may prove vital. If Samuel P. Huntington correctly predicted a long-term Clash of Civilizations the world may need more than cops and intel agents to deal with it. The RAND study has only looked at terror groups that existed since 1968. The Jihad has been in existence for more than a thousand years. Maybe a more prudent announcement might be: Paging James Bond, Mr. District Attorney and Sergeant Rock. Please report for duty against Islamic terrorism. Even that may not be enough.

Let’s see…. Police action with “intelligence agencies” versus the military. We are forgetting a critical component: MSM. Didn’t we have at least one very successful intelligence program exposed by the NYT? The article talks of removing financial and state sponsorship. So, when the US develops the very successful SWIFT operation, the NYT arbitrarily decides that they have to tell the world of its success. Thus causing us to prolong the military component they speak of.

I see no reason, based on their prior record, to believe what the AP writes in these matters. Often a committed leftists will write the “summary” of a report, where they can cherry pick information to emphasize or downplay. Then they leak it to a fellow believer at the AP or NYT, where further distortions are applied. By that time any resemblance to the original report may be accidental.

Better yet, write a report for the government with outlandish conclusions. Have the government refuse to print it. Leak it to the AP. The fact the government wouldn’t publish it means it must be true. No further proof required.

These studies seem incohate to me. How can they infer strategic health or intention from tactical events sprinkled from London to Bali? The difficulty I think even pro-War folks have is that none of the conventional analyses seem to arrive at any Cause but Osama bin Laden/Zawahiri and the loose networks of jihadi groups. What is obvious is that none of the analysts have actual access to these groups themselves, and their public acts and pronouncements are all proganda for their cause. Could it really be that there has been some kind of coalescence of these widely scattered and fractious and decentralized forces – Islamic forces, whose primary cultural characteristic is deep incompetence – with no greater organziation? Personally I don’t think this is possible; these people simply can’t do anything like this worldwide campaign. I’m sorry, if you think so, the onus is on you.

And guess what? There are always huge pieces of the network missing in these analyses. Even hints at state sponsorship don’t ever go into much detail – for example, when citing Iran’s sponsorship of Hezbollah, there never seems to be much discussion of the channels between Hezbollah and another group it purports to helps, just an assertion that weapons X Y Z ended up in the hands of group B. The basic problem, it seems to me, about the Intelligence & Law Enforcement strategy is that it will ultimately require us to continue to tolerate these state sponsors. It’s obvious that sanctions do absolutely nothing, and that the target of sanctions have developed diplomatic strategies to reverse the political gains sanctions might otherwise afford.

And why has no one addressed Russia and China yet? Perhaps the government has decided it must space out the revelations over several administrations where such adversaries and such revelations are concerned. I just wish we’d stop playing diplomatic defense. It is embarrassing.

This is a subject which has been under-discussed, both in the public and in military circles. I have a unique perspective on this issue, having been a combat arms soldier assigned to work with the Afghan National Police.

My experiences were a microcosm of the larger conflict and demonstrated well the lack of mechanisms to deal with these issues in a coherent manner.

Your assertion that insurgent organizations, and particularly Islamic terrorist organizations, need to be criminalized is absolutely on target. This is a phase that needs to be reached during the conflict. One cannot criminalize these elements simply by declaring them to be criminals. What matters is the perception of criminality versus “freedom fighter” or “righteous Jihadi” in the eyes of the population; the center of mass.

One assertion with which I disagree is that there were no military actions taken against al Qaeda prior to 9/11. I believe the one military action directly against al Qaeda to have actually inspired 9/11. I am talking about the cruise missile attacks on suspected al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan following the embassy bombings in Africa. Michael Moore may blame President Bush for 9/11, but these attacks provided impetus and inspiration for the actual method used on 9/11.

Al Qaeda responded to our weak, yet direct, military response by sending the three largest cruise missiles ever deployed in hostile operations against targets in the United States.

The Army struggles to adapt as a counterinsurgent organization, as this requires an enormous shift in organization, training, and conditioned responses at all levels, down to the soldier level.

Police agencies involved in dealing with active armed insurgencies cannot behave like American uniformed street cops. They behave more like organized militia or MP’s. They carry automatic weapons, they conduct security, presence, and combat patrols, They perform a lot of cordon and search operations, often in conjunction with Army units who typically provide outer cordon security while the Police to their work.

They still die at a rate ten times higher than the death rate of Army troops. This is a key indicator of their centrality in counterinsurgency.

American law enforcement agencies working overseas are often very detached from the ground-level troops. I was aware of American law enforcement personnel, but they were “spooky,” and rarely involved at the Provincial level with the Police we mentored. I never saw them involved at the District level.

Often the only evidence we had of any American law enforcement presence was a request for information about a specific individual or a BOLO for a specific individual or vehicle.

My assertion and deeply held belief that the Police are the key to local security and take an increasing role in the actual criminalization and eventual dismantling of insurgent/terrorist cells rings like a tiny bell in the ear of senior officers. They openly declare their belief that the Army is the main effort and I have heard with my own ears a senior officer say, “I know that GEN Lima says that the Police are to be our main effort, but I believe that the Army is the key to winning, so we’re just not going to do that.”

There were no repercussions to this refusal to follow the commander’s intent. My shock is everlasting.

The Army/Marines do not fully grasp the importance of the Police in counterinsurgency from the local to the international level. The Armed Forces are capable of contributing greatly to this aspect of the fight, but it requires a paradigm shift in the minds of many senior officers. There is a disconnect and territorialism between the Armed Forces and Federal law enforcement that prevents effective unity of action; part of which is parochialism and part of which is due to a lack of unity of command.

We could do a much better job of this. This is an excellent example of winning in spite of ourselves.

I could write pages on this topic; it is an essential recurring tile in the mosaic of global insurgency/counterinsurgency that we are presented with. This is an excellent topic.

PS… I know that there were four “cruise missiles” deployed by al Qaeda on 9/11, but one of them suffered a “guidance system failure” and did not reach its intended target. We are all familiar with the heroic actions of the passengers of Flight 93.

I do understand that these were not actual cruise missiles but passenger aircraft. However, upon their hijacking, each became a cruise missile in al Qaeda’s inventory with a human guidance system. That was the intent and the effect of the events of 9/11.

Our military complex quite obviously has a long standing blind spot on the wide range of civil disciplines required for successful post-occupational operations once the tactical phase of a battle is over. That is a given.

If they can learn and adapt from that as brilliantly as they’ve done with the Iraqi “insurgency” issue there should not be a problem. The only thing getting in their way, imo, is the rigid mindset of too many folk sporting stars on their collars. Old Blue’s experience tends to prove that, unfortunately. But I still feel safer having someone who doesn’t have to wait for a warrant running the WOT. The problems enumerated in this post pale in comparison to having folks in charge who must clear every step with our overly liberal judicial system. Or is tying our hands too tightly the purpose of this meme in the first place?

History shows an underlying distrust and aversion to the military, and even though the same people who constantly push to legislate our personal behavior (ex: adult seatbelt laws) they seem to fear some nebulous loss of constitutional rights in protecting ourselves from terrorist infiltrators.

There was no such concern when German agents were rafting in on our beaches from submarines surfacing off the Manhattan shore, but what is the difference?

The historical distrust, resulting in a love/hate relationship with the military, is part of our national personality. We see all too often how a strong military can derail any democratic flow (Musharraf’s Pakistani takeover, multiple military coups in South and Central America and Africa,) and so we are relatively assured through constant back-pressure that we will not be the victim of such a national hijacking.

This is, despite periodic irritations, a good thing. However, there are other dangers which have been applauded by the same people. Witness this snippet from a July 2nd speech made by Sen Obama in Colorado Springs,

“We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we’ve set. We’ve got to
have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.”

Our national distrust of such an organization, unbound as it would be by the Posse Commitatus Act, loosed upon our domestic landscape should be extreme. It should actually be an aversion.

The lack of a significant terrorist attack on our soil post-9/11 is evidence of several factors, one of which is the relative efficacy of our domestic law enforcement operations. Here, on our soil, terrorists are criminals who are largely being dealt with via our law-enforcement arm with the assistance of intelligence-gathering capabilies at the national level. We are consistenly applying pressure on the decentralized terrorist network globally to place them in the same position elsewhere. Our task should be to do this more effectively.

There is a massive push to minimize, minimize the Islamic component, minimize the Arab / foreign fighter component, minimize the victories of the west, minimize success, minimize clear terminology like War on Terror, it is all part of the leftist liberal elitist attitude of accommodation, empathy, etc. You see it everywhere, look at Britain which sought accommodation of radical extremism, sought to make deals with Islamists, that worked out well for them. Now Islam is devouring them whole from their own home, every day they bow lower & lower to dhimmi status and practically celebrate it, declare how more accommodation is necessary, not seeing favorable results? It’s only because you haven’t prostrated yourself low enough!!

Everything is minimized, where are the moderate Muslims, hundreds of millions of them? Standing up and stating clearly with a loud voice that this radical pestilence does not represent them? Almost a decade now, they are nearly nowhere to be found, they are represented by groups like CAIR who on closer examination have links to terrorists – laughable. Shhh, minimize it, bury it, accommodate it.

There are no radical Muslims, 99% of terrorism isn’t carried out by Arabs & Radical Muslims, these are just common criminals, there is no underlying root that ties them together, it is not Islamic Fundamentalism, just random action caused by socio-economic conditions, like a common thug, if only we had educated him better, if only we had given him the same opportunity as the white person he wouldn’t be a terrorist.. ER I mean criminal. Minimize, deflect blame, soften solutions, and avoid fighting & war at all costs. This is the modern liberal elite nihilist attitude, this is the fashionable thing, the raison d’etre for Europe, and now more & more America.

Islam, Jihad, Muslims, Arabs, they are not to blame, you are to blame. Don’t kill the jihadi, feel his pain, give him a lawyer & a court room, toss him technicalities, if only you give him what he wants, like the common thug he will take your wallet & be on his way, leave you alone.. It’s not a clash of civilization, or religions, or extremism it’s about not ‘giving enough’, ‘caring enough’, not bowing down on the mat of Islam 5 times daily LOW ENOUGH.

I am struck by the fact that however analysts come down on the warfare/lawfare debate in countering Islamic Jihad, both sides grasp at that poll in Pakistan and interpret it as a sign that Muslims have turned away from terror. The pipeline for Islamic Jihad is complex. It requires widespread indoctrination at mosques, money, and Muslims. We are only addressing the pointiest end of the Islamic Jihad dagger by confronting Jihadists on the battlefield — and this will remain necessary. But to what extent is our society prepared to poke our noses into the ongoings in those mosques, and to wreak vengeance on the financiers of Jihad?

Given the nature of our magnificent society, one based on tolerance, freedom of speech, and freedom of religion, it is nearly impossible for me to imagine we will ever take the necessary steps to outlaw those aspects of Islam which promote Jihad — it is tantamount to outlawing the “religion” itself — something I advocate, but don’t see happening any time soon. I am often accused of being a right wing fanatic for this view — but by the time our society wakes up to the absolute necessity of this step, it will probably be too late to be effective.

It is disturbing that nearly 7 full years after 9/11, Muslims continue to make tremendous gains in the less violent wide ranging Jihad they’re waging. At best, I suggest those polls in Pakistan only represent a temporary turning away from mass murder for the sake of Islam. At worst, they simply represent an ongoing wish to see infidels annihilated, so long as too many Muslims don’t get hurt in the process. Those Muslims in Pakistan haven’t abandoned their fervent dreams of our genocide, they’re expressing a disappointment that al Qaida has failed to murder us (so far) in spiraling numbers. They have not abandoned their cancerous core ideology of Islamic supremacism.

Further, in the event that a catastrophic WMD attack succeeds, and it is a near certainty that eventually such an attack will succeed, then watch those numbers swell again to the level seen in the years after 9/11. All they need is a little inspiration, and the conflagration of hatred will be reignited again.

It is too much to expect that our warriors in the military, and our police forces are up to the task of destroying the ideology of Islam which animates all of these nightmares. Until we see convincing evidence that Muslims are turning away from Islam itself, as long as they are permitted to continue indoctrinating in their mosques across the planet, as long as sufficient money flows into Muslim coffers (just look at what they accomplished with $8-35/barrel oil…), we will continue to see the entire panoply of Jihad unfold. Remember, it isn’t just the “suicide bombers”, or the cowardly plane hijackers which constitute Jihad. Every time another Muslim is added to the Islamic roster, every time an infidel is intimidated, every time another Muslim moves onto territory not formerly held by Islam, Jihad continues, Islam spreads, and our war is being lost.

I once met an very interesting Indian gentleman who was a serving Colonel in the Indian Army.
We were playing golf (like many addicted golfers, he goes to great lengths to get on a golf course, so trans-oceanic travel is no obstacle) and we were discussing his experiences in the Indian counterinsurgency effort against the Pakistanis in Khashmir (sic).
Two nuclear powers in a low level confrontation, one lobbing mortar rounds from inside a crowded village at the other’s border outposts. The other, of course, figuring out ways to get the Pakistani Islamofacisti out of th village in order to deprive them of their propaganda goal, the infliction of collateral casualties on the civilian non-combatants. The Islamic terrorists appear to use that tactic at every point of confrontation and India appears to have a pretty good handle on the solution. Maybe we could study their counterinsurgency doctrine and methods to our own profit.
At least India is still talking to us and is not harboring the enemy at the same time.

Oh, and another thing.
The shooting war was pretty much over when Mr. J. Paul Bremer, a career State Department hack if ever there was one, was put in charge and totally bolluxed the end game.
We know that State has a track record of sabotage and malicious compliance, based on their own stalinist lite worldview (as they will tell you, they are the professionals, after all), but I think the rank arrogance and utter stupidity of Mr. J Paul Bremer is a much more reasonable explaination for his blunders.
It is not a mystery, then, that senior military commanders on the ground believe that civilian leadership in these matters (occupation and pacification ops) is a huge risk and potential war loser. Might as well turn it over to the bleeping press corps.

After 2001, al Qai’da significantly increased its number of attacks which spanned a wider geographic area across Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. As Figure 6.2 indicates, al-Qai’da continued to conduct attacks in several key locations, such as Saudi Arabia and Kenya. But it also expanded into North Africa (Tunisia and Algeria), Asia (Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Pakistan), the Middle East (Jordan, Turkey, and Egypt), and Europe (the United Kingdom). …

Saudi Arabia (hello, did he forget Khobar Towers and the other location back in ’95)Kenya and Tanzania; did he forget 1998.North Africa (the GIA/FIS campaign against the Algerian state, where does he think Ressam came from) Jordan (where Zarquawi was from, and Abu Zubeydah operated; that Christmas attempt in 2000) Egypt (do we have to relive Luxor)Europe was less likely but the Paris bombings of the
early 90s, inpart tied to France’s support of the FLN are indicative)One could argue that the Iraq operation, did provide a surge ofcandidates
from other parts of the ummah, but their reception among the Coalition forces, has weakened their enthusiasm. Does he really think, you can have constables in Waziristan?

I wonder if an over confidence in the law enforcement aspect will not lead to less freedom for our nations’ people? The example of the generations’ long “War against Drugs” has led to a corrupt DEA, the province of British Columbia swimming in Drug Money, and changes in the legal systems that are extremely un-funny for its victims. Imagine if the police forces got an equivalent mountain of ‘funds’ to explicitly ‘fight terrorism.’

Of course, the Left hates the military option, but I can see that it will embrace with fervor the cop option… And we will welcome the millions of cameras on street corners, like in Britain; and spying by neighbours on neighbours, with reports to the local cop shop… all in the name of National Security.

The problem of dichotimies in approaching problems is that it ignores the spectrum of what is actually going on. This is not just a law enforcement problem or just a military problem but both. The overall problem are those individuals taking up the negative liberty of waging personal war contrary to the civilized world’s approach of relegating that to state based entities. By doing that thing, individuals are taking up military arms on their own and waging private war which is both warfare and grave attack on the concept of states that we utilize for common defense. That is why these individuals fall outside of civilized rules for warfare – their actions place them outside the realm of state based warfare. That, back when these were considered to be brigands, bandits, pirates, and warlords usually got them one thing when attacking militarily: dead. Often with a tribunal to ensure that they were these actors, but the summary at the end was fatal and final as they were a corrosive influence on the trust placed in states to wage war.

There is a civil side to this, as those caught doing this in prior eras normally got the short end of things. Pirates had a single chance to clear their name, which is why Captain Morgan turned himself in to civil authorities: to demonstrate that the declaration against him was misplaced due to circumstances. A civil trial in Admiralty court could do that in a way a military tribunal could not, and the risk he took to do that got him Knighted. Today the civil penalty for that crime against the Law of Nations is life in jail, which seems pretty fair for the modern miscreants, too.

That said the morphing of terrorism and crime was known pre-9/11 as talked about by Ralf Mutschke, Interpol’s Assistant Director, Criminal Intelligence Directorate on written testimony presented to the Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, 13 DEC 2000:

“Structural links between political terrorism and traditional criminal activity, such as drugs trafficking, armed robbery or extortion have come increasingly to the attention of law enforcement authorities, security agencies and political decision makers. There is a fairly accepted view in the international community that in recent years, direct state sponsorship has declined, therefore terrorists increasingly have to resort to other means of financing, including criminal activities, in order to raise funds. These activities have traditionally been drug trafficking, extortion/collection of “revolutionary taxes”, armed robbery, and kidnappings. The involvement of such groups as the PKK, LTTE, and GIA in these activities has been established.

[..]

The GIA is a very active and deadly terrorist organization operating mainly in Algeria but which has also mounted several terrorist attacks in France, including the hijacking of an Air France jetliner in 1994 and a bombing campaign in 1995. Their aim is the overthrow of the Algerian Secular Government and its replacement with an Islamic state. They have developed large scale support and financing activities in Europe and other parts of the world. An analysis recently conducted at the Interpol General Secretariat has revealed GIA involvement in a number of criminal activities in several European countries. Although the information received is fragmented, it has been established that GIA support networks are involved in extortion, currency counterfeiting, fraud, and money laundering.”

That amongst many citations in his testimony. These are groups taking up military arms and using criminal means to fund themselves. The estimated heroin traffic through the Balkans in the late 1990′s was $40 billion/year, of which any group that can get even a fraction of that trade system and impose a terrorist tax on it is looking at hundreds of millions of dollars per year to fund themselves. Part of the reason IRA members were caught in Colombia pre-9/11 was the sheer amount of money made as profit off of the trade systems the controlled once the cartels went under: $1 billion/year. That is not a law enforcement problem at its root, but one of a large non-state organization using weapons to enforce its will upon a population. That could not be taken down without a combined military and police campaign and the major worry is that cocaine production is now shifting southwards to states not prepared to deal with this sort of thing.

On the flip side Mexico is seeing heavy investments by foreign groups in the Mexican drug gangs to the point the older cartels are having a problem surviving. In 2003 the Library of Congress made a report on the Organized Crime situation in Mexico looking at 1999-2002 and some of the findings are as follows:

“Mexico’s drug trafficking and alien smuggling networks have expanded their criminal activities aimed at the United States by capitalizing on the explosive growth of transborder commerce under NAFTA and the attendant growth in human and merchandise traffic between Mexico and the United States. The growth in trans-border commerce, as manifested in soaring levels of overland passenger and commercial vehicle traffic, has provided an ever-expanding “haystack” in which the “needles” of illicit narcotics and illegal aliens can be more easily concealed.

In the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, increased border security measures temporarily heightened the risks of interdiction for Mexican drug traffickers and alien smugglers. This heightened level of risk forced smugglers to increase their reliance on sophisticated counter-detection measures, such as border tunnels, multiple repackaging of drug shipments, containerization, and rail transport.
Mexico’s three major drug cartels are being superseded by a half-dozen smaller, corporate style, trafficking networks. In a process that mirrors the post-cartel reconstitution of drug trafficking networks in Colombia, this “new generation” of Mexican drug traffickers is less prone to violence and more likely to employ sophisticated technologies and cooperative strategies. The processes that are driving Mexican drug trafficking organizations toward establishing cooperative networks of increasing sophistication and decreasing visibility are likely to intensify in the post- September 11 environment. As a result, Mexican drug trafficking networks are likely to emulate their Colombian counterparts by investing heavily in counterintelligence, expanding and diversifying their legitimate enterprises, and concealing transnational partnerships that could attract undue attention from U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies.

Alien smuggling from Mexico to the United States is a US$300 million-a-year business, second only to Mexico’s illicit drug trade in terms of revenues from criminal activities. Between 100 and 300 human smuggling rings operate in Mexico, many of which are loosely coupled with one or more of a half-dozen core human smuggling networks that have extensive transnational contacts.

A variety of Russian criminal organizations, operating through dozens of small cells, are engaged in a wide range of illegal activities in Mexico. Some Russian criminal organizations based in southern California have entered into drug trafficking partnerships with Mexican drug cartels.

Asian criminal organizations are active in Mexico as partners with domestic alien smuggling and human trafficking rings, as suppliers of primary materials for narcotics to Mexican drug traffickers, and as wholesalers and retailers of counterfeit merchandise and pirated intellectual property.

During the late 1990s, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) established a clandestine arms smuggling and drug trafficking partnership with the Tijuana-based Arellano Felix Organization (AFO).

Since the mid-1990s, Mexico, at the request of the Spanish government, has deported scores of terrorists belonging to the Basque separatist group, Fatherland and Liberty (ETA).

Statements by high-ranking Mexican officials prior to and following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks indicate that one or more Islamic extremist organizations has sought to establish a presence in Mexico.”

That is not a law enforcement problem, when you have FARC, ETA and other organizations even worse than them show up, including, in that report, al Qaeda, Hezbollah and Hamas. That is a criminal insurgency turning to warfare as aided and abetted by outside organizations with their own goals of what they want to achieve in Mexico. Already a number of well armed hit squads have been found in Arizona which makes one feel very less than secure in what is going on there. And as the influx of weapons goes beyond the standard AK-47, something that the Red Mafia organizations have been more than ready to use elsewhere, such as the UK, the question of escalation of violence is not one of *if* but *when*. By early this year the death toll per month in Mexico due to these organizations passed those of the monthly tolls in Iraq, not that anyone cared to look at an increasing death toll just south of the US border…

Law enforcement must have a role to play, if simply to do the COIN job of pulling up the support networks based on criminal activity.

Military activity must be used to blunt, negate and bring a forceful end to these organizations when they show up dealing death and destruction. They wield those weapons voluntarily, and so they have earned the rough justice of war outside the realm of nation states. Military and police organizations must work together and also ensure that corruption does not spread into them and is countered. In that Mexico needs a lot of help, while Colombia is finally getting a handle on it. Without that you have no guarantee that things will get better and stay that way.

People forget that the first hundred years of the US Army was as a frontier constabulary force more so than a conventional military force as used in Europe at the time. Similarly people who point out Posse Comitatus as a law protecting civil liberties ignore the historical context of its implementation which was to get the Army away from the polling stations in the south so that blacks could be denied their vote and their civil rights for nearly a hundred years. There is no perfect, but work tends to flow towards competency. If the other institutions can’t produce or perform, you’re going to get what does.

Anyone who thinks there isn’t a military component in islam’s wish for a worldwide caliphate should read this article;http://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/iran_nuclear_plan/2008/07/29/117217.html
This may be old news to some, but it curled my hair, and I don’t have much to curl. Any politician who would believe we don’t have real enemies is seriously deluded and therefore unfit for office.

US government must point out to REAL enemy: kremlin and communist china rulers.

Also Government MUST make public all dirty deals they had with enemy since 1917 Bolsheviks coup.
This will create an outstanding public support in USA: people feel that they are not told the truth.

O, yeah, they did a lot of bad things

We should deny communist regimes any diplomatic recognition and seize any trade with them immediately. Including any trade with OPEC- their allies. We can make methanol in USA to substitute all imported oil EASILY.

Then all practical military measures must take place.

If we continue like it is now:

very soon China allied with Russia will attack our homeland under disguise of islamic terrorists OR NOT

it will be a biological attack most likely, drug trafficker’s routs will be used to smuggle in tons of anthrax or something to this matter and number of victims here could reach hundred million or MORE

We have been using the police method for over 50 years in the “War on Drugs” and have only succeeded in making drugs cheaper, more dangerous and more prevalent. Meanwhile, the military has had a resolution to every conflict they have been in within 10 years of starting.

Using the AP & Joe Klein as sources sets your article in quicksand right from the start. The problem is that the populations from which the terrorists are drawn do not consider them to be criminals! They perceive the terrorists as warriors. You must change that perception before you get any credibility with “Cops vs. Generals” scenario.

What a moron this Seth Jones is. He’s absolutely refusing to acknowledge the source of Islamic jihad in the Qur’an and ahadith. Let me refer all of you to the case of one Maj. Coughlin in the Pentagon months ago whose role was slowly de-funded because he had the temerity to suggest that jihad does indeed describe, legitimately so, the war doctrine of Islam. To just say the jihadists are not holy warriors and are only criminals is stupid beyond comprehension. Seth Jones is working for people who have agreed to accept the Saudi offensive against Westerners who have named this beast correctly.

This isn’t a matter of cops vs. the military. That’s besides the point. First, you have to be grounded in reality, and Seth Jones and the people he represents are not so grounded. You cannot de-legitimize people who know Islamic scripture and the authoritative ahadith by saying that they are not legit. That only works with fools. And the jihadists are not fools. Maybe Seth Jones and other people in the U.S. government are fools, but not the jihadists.

Playing the game as Seth Jones suggests only puts us back into the whack-a-mole mode. And how would he explain the statement that was made to Thomas Jefferson, then an ambassador, by the diplomatic representative of the Barbary nations? Those people told Mr. Jefferson that under their Qur’an and Islamic Law they had a right to wage jihad against all unbelievers on the high seas. Thomas Jefferson then read the Qur’an and got it right. He had the right doctrine: you wage war against these people. You slam the mailed fist right into their faces and you bust ‘em up.

The Saudis and other Islamic leaders are getting their money’s worth with RAND.

Seth Jones, a RAND political scientist and author of a study on fighting terrorism, is a screaming liberal and NOT very smart, despite having a closet full of degrees.
Remember, the Clinton Administration tried the Terror is a crime approach. THAT is what led to the 9-11 attacks. The crime approach is fundamentally flawed in that it allows the terrs to use our own laws against us, in a sort of political judo technique.
The ‘government’ of Sudan offered Osama to Clinton in handcuffs. That administration was unable to take him, because they didn’t have due cause, which terrorism as a crime requires. Once Congress declared war, Legal mechanisms for dealing with terrs fell into play. If Clinton had had war powers, he could have accepted Osama and there would have been no 9-11. Instead he bombed an asprin factory in a quasi legal act of war.
With terrorism treated as a crime, the West is defenseless. As a political act (war) terrorism will be easy to defeat. You just go after the States that sponsor it. Once enough of those states fall, the rest will stop supporting terrorism.

Meanwhile, the current administration has seen that terrorism is an act of war and responded in kind. That has led to the terrs getting an arse whoopin all across the globe.

Seth Is parroting the Democratic talking points because if he doesn’t he and his fellow socialists have to face up to the fact that they are wrong and PRESIDENT Bush is right.
Terrorism is a political act. Crime is an economic act.
Since American politicians get elected in order to steal money, it is easy to see why they confuse the two.

“People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election.”*
*
_Otto Von Bismarck

While I am fundamentally in the President’s corner on this, even he has made mistakes and has some wrong perceptions of the nature of the problem. But, I’ll settle for his results as opposed to the likely outcomes his political opponents would have us accept.

Pretty smart guy, Otto von Bismark

Still, I wish we had someone – anyone – with the brains and testicular fortitude of a Thomas Jefferson around today.

What Americans don’t have, that we should derive lessons from even if we don’t replicate them in our own country, is militarized law enforcement organizations like the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Spanish Guardia Civil, French Gendarmerie Mobile and Italian Carabinieri. National police with the training and firepower to kill people and break things when required.

With so many law enforcement officers in the National Guard, one would think U. S. Army Military Police could field provisonal Constabulary Brigades to fill that niche between the Peace Corps and a Stryker Brigade Combat Team.

This insurgency is made up of jihadists of different stripes. Most of it is led by al Qaeda, but there are other elements. Three, in fact:

1) Wahhabist – led by al Qaeda as outlined by Lt. Col (Dr) David Kilcullen in the link above
2) The Muslim Brotherhood. Hamas is one of their proxies
3) The Deobandists. Active in Pakistan and Asia, mostly
4) The Khomeinists. Hezbollah is one of their proxies, and the Alawite regime in Syria is increasingly a proxy too.

Tom the Redhunter is spot on with his analysis. We aren’t dealing with the Red Brigades, the Weathermen, the IRA, or the Bader-Meinhof killers. Now we know just how poor the scholarship of the RAND Corporation is.

Kabud that is a possibility, but the fact that in 2002 Saddam still thought he was going to get away intact tells met there was no time to move CW capabilities to Iran. That and the continuing enmity between the two countries. While I would not discount prior arrangements as in the one way fighter jet flights to Iran in 1990, the nature of the stuff and competing technologies would still present a huge roadblock. The question still remains where the rest of that 1/4 is. I tend to think most of it was blown up by our guys from the air and sea. I could, easily be wrong.

Seth Jones Rand report uses some sketchy and circumstantial and highly (IMO) irrelevant data to make its points. The number of attacks on police and the their families as proof the police and not the military were the more dangerous to the terrorists. I don’t suppose the accessibility of the target had anything to do with a terrorists decisions. The paper is shot full of other useless connections to misapplied data. Rand is a think tank, I wonder what their peer reviewer had to say about the good professor’s work.

The mix of military and law enforcement roles is not something to shy away from, but it is something to be embraced, the more skills that can be shared between LEOs and our troops the better intel and more effective the response among the population. Communications plays a huge role in countering terror operatives, it is not something an effete, shortsighted and selfish turf approach will survive. That is why the failures of the CIA and DoS are so glaring and so frequent, they are (were) too frequently, only listening to themselves.

Professional diplomats and soldiers have to mix, and in an intel on demand system the command structure of a unit will be tied into diplomatic and Intelligence resources. If those resources are working against the mission, or in a manner that slows or holds up the work puts lives in jeopardy and missions at risk. There is no such a thing as a LEO only or military only approach to combating terror, to consider that there may be is nothing short of foolish and dangerous to boot.

That being said, the really heavy lifting using large military movements and large units should be for the most part done. Training and preparing others including indigenous units to perform military and security functions will continue as well as forces that can counter negative effects on a local population. Without their cooperation there is no counter insurgency.

i just had a conversation wit an expert on Iraq. I hope he will write about it to make all things clear, but i will try to do it in short:

1.Sadam was manipulated by KGB. Well, kremlin was buying most of his oil under oil-for-food and not just Kremlin, but in 2002(or other year) i think it was over 100 millions barrels they imported

All the weaponry including CW, BW and NW he had from them.

Manipulation had a goal to make USA to invade Iraq. Sadam was a big deficit for Kremlin: his presence made his neighborers scared and USA role to defend them VITAL.

Kremlin convinced Sadam that USA will never invade.

Putin offered Bush once to get rid of Sadam through covert operations that KGB could do.
It was a manipulation to make Bush feel that Kremlin is on our side in it. Bush refused.

Remember how Sadam was captured: it tells us that he with all his billions stashed in venezuela and other places did not help him because he was fooled by kgb. Sadam could have get in the agreement with USA and would survive. But KGB was very good on working on him. So we invaded.

And things changed.

Today we should remain in IRAQ as long as we can.
At least another 15 years at minimum.

We have to turn tables. We have to make good out of bad.

We MUST secure Iraq path to a better society and regain our influence in the region:
IRAQ should become a model for the rest of Islam world.
————–

the failures of the CIA and DoS are coming from years of infiltration of our institutions.
may be DOS less then CIA, because the general morale and patriotism in the ARMY is of a very high level. But decisions are made by politicians and they are very much volnurable to enemy influence

The major misconception Washington has is their refusal to reach directly to people in the totalitarian regimes: in Iran, Russia, China, etc

People there are our ally

And governments are our enemies

We can solve some problems through military or political solutions but we will never win like that

Wadeusaf: It is an establish fact that Saddam HAD WMD and that he got it out of Iraq prior to the March 2003 invasion. And it doesn’t take much. You could fit a bio-warfare starter kit in your shirt poscket. A few cans of chicken soup and a couple of weeks and you have the means of killing millions. The VX that went to Syria was in Droms that look like what they line the roads with when doing construction work. Of the MANY airplane loads the went to Syria, about 400 kilos (approx. 20 barrels) we re-found by the Jordan secret service after Z-cow tried to smuggle into Jordan to be used in a mass casualty terror attack.
The MSM is very aware of all this, they are just using their gate keeping function to keep it from becoming general knowledge.
Olmert has resifned. That is the #1 news item in the world, insofar as it affects the world. Yet you hjave to google to read about it. None of the major media outlets are covering it as news. That is prolly because his replacement will be Bibi, who the Socialists hate almost as much as they hate PRESIDENT Bush.
It will give a terrorist loving, Socialist voting Reporter a bad case of the hives to have Big Mac and Bibi fighting terrorism together.
A Commando and a fighter jock. Bring it on.

Fred here is another good German for you;
“Against criticism a man can neither protest nor defend himself; he must act in spite of it, and then it will gradually yield to him.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
German dramatist, novelist, poet, & scientist (1749 – 1832)

Yes it is an established fact that Saddam had WMD, worse he was and remained capable of using as well as reformulating rather quickly his WMD programs. I am not questioning that. While the MSM has played the very despicable role of revealing secrets, they are singularly incapable of keeping one, especially if it is published in a public domain document. As far as I am aware 40 Kassam rocket parts including engines, capable certainly of carrying WMD is the only thing connected to Saddam that has been uncovered in Jordan. Again, I could be wrong, but I don’t recall any documentation or even any reasonable rumor describing what you just described.

I could be wrong, I have real and serious doubts about the veracity of these stories.

Kabud, better try that one again. At the time that Russians (along with Frenchmen and some other countries sons) were involved in the Oil For Food Scam, It has been very well documented who did what for what amounts and when. I hope you don’t mind if I request some verification for your claims.

According to high-ranking Russian SVR defector Tretyakov, the Oil-for-Food program was sabotaged by an undercover Russian intelligence officer Alexander Kramar who worked in the UN. Kramar set up the artificially low oil prices in 1998 to allow Saddam to use the oil vouchers as lucrative bribes. The difference between the market price and the artificial price (defined by Kramar) was pocketed by people who received the vouchers from Saddam. Among the bribed were top officials from Russia, France, and China [7]. The biggest part of vouchers (to buy 1,366 billion barrels (2.172×1011 m³) of oil) went to forty-six individuals or organizations in Russia, including Russian Orthodox Church. They pocketed $476 million [7]. Among Russians who received the money were Alexander Voloshin and Vladimir Zhirinovsky. Sergei Isakov, a buddy of Voloshin, carried bags with money from Moscow to Baghdad to return some of the “earned” money as kickbacks to Saddam [7].

Are you, and others on this board, aware that there was a Russian Operation Sarindar executed during the months before the invasion of Iraq?

The Israelis got the goods on them. There were also witnesses to the program, in Syria and in Iraq, who have provided information about what the Russians took out of Iraq and buried in Syria and Lebanon.

The official response of the United States government has been to go quiet about this and bite the bullet. Doing so cost us plenty. Most of the American public thinks the WMD’s were made up shit by Bush and Cheney, but the truth of the matter would enrage them. But President Bush, the CIA, and the State Department decided that, just in case Russia MIGHT be of help with Iran it would not do to piss the Russians off with a disclosure of the program.

Yet, the program happened. We have the knowledge about it. I wonder how a President Obonga is going to react to this information when he lays eyes on it after he gets in office. It is an official state secret and he will have access to them all.

Perhaps I am (too feeble minded). I did run my own search, looking for verifiable documentation, not rumor driven fluff. I found fluff and the 40 cases of rocket parts I was already aware of. I won’t try to explain how or why. Thank you for taking the time to correct my flawed and faulty investigation.

Speculation and what I thought at the time was overly heavy emphasis on WMD, as presented to the UN by Sec Of State Colin Powell make precision and accuracy a must when dealing with the issue. The failure of the Survey Group to locate much upon the initial invasion was heartening news in a way, in that it may have been destroyed whether or not by us.

So right away, when reading the Loftus report link provided by Kabud, I got hooked on the 1/4 CW measure sent to Iran in 2002 (prior to invasion), I still find that a bit credulous, but I do know stranger things have occurred when dealing with an “enemy of my enemy” situation. Many of the links I checked (like most of the 1,240,000 entries you raised) have little in the way of verifiable fact, most contain opinion or non attributed quotes or worse the stories rely on other stories relying on other stories with no real starting point. Rumor control. I’ve tracked too many of these stories to dead ends before to get too excited. Thank you.

So the question raised is whether or not the CW hauled in by the Jordanians originated with Saddam. The sheer volume of it indicates it is highly probable. Other aspects of the story can be (and have been) argued from various POV by various “experts”. The detail of the CNN story about the size, the intent, and the admixture of Chemicals and explosive potential of the bomb blasts can used to hide or screen the fact that so much material was in fact discovered.

I also feel frustrated by the way in which the MSM has handled the intelligence findings of the Clinton White house, and dismayed at the total lack of integrity on the part of many major “news gathering” organizations. Thank you, Mr. Samford, for you dedication to truth and accuracy.

Considering our main “allies” in the war on (Islamic) terorism are Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and even good old Sudan, does this matter? With friends like them, who needs enemies? Or the wonderful Muslims we freed, and they are so grateful aren’t they, in Afghanistan and Iraq now have a freedom hating shariah constitutions. Trouble with Bush, he has no coherence or vision, he wil lie in bed with any two bit satrap who even partially goes along with him instead of having the guts to confront the issue head on. But the right loves his simple minded, incoherent talk and thinking causes it matches their own. Well, at least the Right is willing to fight instead of the geeks on the left with the kumbaya routines. It would be like if after Ve and VJ Day there were two countries actively espousing Nazi and Bushido ideology with ties to occupied Germany and Japan, and those countries were out allies.

I was reading a good book about the North African campaign in WW ll, and even then, there was outrage over leaving Vichy collaborators like Admiral Darlan and others in charge of civil administration of the French colonies there, until a monarchist with Britsh SOE training did him in.

Kabud,
nice to see you stuck on those WMD’s, maybe you can get OJ to help you find them after you both find his ex wife’s killer? Since our enemy is Islamic fundamentalism, does it bother you that our allies are Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and even good old Sudan? Yet Saddam was neither a jihadist as well as a counter weight to Iran. Good thinking, good strategy, so subtle!

“Yet Saddam was neither a jihadist as well as a counter weight to Iran. Good thinking, good strategy, so subtle!”

Saddam was a major sponsor of terror activities both among his own people and Palestinian organizations. It was more than paying the families of suicide murderers for the deeds. His successful dabbling with Biological and Chemical Weapons made him serious danger to the US and Israel and any who crossed the Islamists.

The Iraqi insurgency displayed the plans of Saddam and the brutality of both the Baathists and Al Q. So whether or not you or I thought Saddam was a Jihadist, does not matter, the folks who followed him did and the folks who took his money for terror did not and the folks who would benefit from his slipping the bonds of UN Sanctions would not have worried if Saddam was a true jihadist or not.

if we have such idiots in Dep of State- so look in the mirror: YOU BROUGHT IT ON YOURSELF. AND WILL PAY.

Bush at least has an understanding that USA must remain in IRAQ for another decade or two – even better.

i hope he does. But it does not matter any more.

I think that ms Rice more likely works for a foreign power in Moscow

May be not just her among the President’s close advisers.

I payed a lot attention to EVERY WORD PUBLISHED by RICE, her speeches here and abroad, her doctorate, her past. I even found people who attended the same russian program in Leningrad that Rice went. I found things on them too.

I also know- and all of it by the way is in the public domain -
who pushed her in Dep of State and who were those people.

I would not be surprised from what i know about soviet methods to influence important people – if Bush was or may be regularly is drugged by some very sophisticated mind-controlling chemical agents.

There were numerous instances when it was done.

Our enemy is not islamic fundamentalist- they are used against us because they are idiots and it is easy to find fanatics there
And because naive people like you are so easily fooled((